What's Showing April 21st, 2012

What’s Showing Today? Saturday, April 21
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Featured Screening: O Drakos at Spectacle

Spectacle‘s World of Darkness International noir series continues tonight with O Drakos (“The Dragon,” also known as The Fiend of Athens), one of my own picks for the lineup. It runs tonight at 7:30 pm and is followed at 9:30 by Cairo Station, from Alexandria, Egypt.

O Drakos is routinely cited as a candidate for the greatest Greek film ever made—and at that, its relative obscurity makes a strong case for Greece a a criminally under-appreciated national cinema ripe for rediscovery. The film features a mild-mannered stool pigeon type whose life spins out of control when the Athens newspaper publishes an image of a notorious serial killer that strikingly bears his likeness. With the entire city on the alert, he’s vaulted into the center of a hysterical manhunt and seeks asylum in an speakeasy-style nightclub that doubles as the hub of the Athens underworld. The regulars mistake him for the killer, too—and revere him as a folk hero. There paranoid sensibilities of Fritz Lang and Carol Reed are at work, but in its cool pacing, gritty location photography and debt to American crime pictures O Drakos anticipates the work of Jean-Pierre Melville and the French New Wave. Sometimes the work at Spectacle falls into the category of flawed gems—but this is an undeniable masterpiece.

Ditto Cairo Station, an unsettling tale of an obsessive, perverse newspaper salesman. Released 1958, it’s notable for anticipating tone, themes and stylistic devices of Peeping Tom and Psycho. Next month Spectacle spotlights director Youssef Chahine‘s semi-autobiographical Alexandria Trilogy.

Also Noted

It may be a little late to point out, but today’s a great one for epic durational viewing. At 180 minutes, Rooftop Films‘ 7:00 pm screening of the original, David Attenborough-narrated Planet Earth series seems paltry in comparison to Light Industry‘s 312-minute showing of Jean-Luc Godard & Anne-Marie Miéville‘s France/Tour/Detour/Two/Children and Exit Art‘s presentation of the 645 minute epic Evolution of a Philipino Family—best as I can figure, the longest non-episodic theatrical narrative feature ever made. The Whitney also offers a chance to view the entirety of George Kuchar‘s Weather Diaries.

Today

Havana Film Festival New York
Full Listings

Tribeca Film Festival
Full Listings

Basic Cable Classics at 92YTribeca
Series Details

• F/X (Robert Mandel). Details. 35mm. 1986. 109 min. 7:00 pm.
• Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins (Guy Hamilton). Details. 35mm. 1985. 121 min. 9:30 pm.

Ongoing

Jean Gentil (Laura Amelia Guzmán & Israel Cárdenas) at Anthology Film Archives. Details. 2010. 84 min. 5:00, 7:00 and 9:00 pm.
The Devil, Probably (Robert Bresson) at BAMCinématek. Details. 35mm. 1977. 95 min. 2:00, 4:30, 6:50 and 9:15 pm.
Post Mortem (Pablo Larraín) at Film Forum. Details. 2010. 98 min. 1:00, 3:15, 5:40, 7:50 and 10:00 pm.
The Gang’s All Here (Busby Berkeley) at Film Forum. Details. 35mm. 1943. 103 min. 1:00, 3:10, 5:20, 7:30 and 9:40 pm.
Gerhard Richter Painting (Corinna Belz) at Film Forum. Details. 2011. 94 min. 1:00, 6:10 and 10:15 pm.
A Separation (Asghar Farhadi) at Film Forum. Details. 2011. 122 min. 3:00 and 8:00 pm.
Oki’s Movie (Hong Sang-soo) at Maysles Cinema. Details.  2010. 80 min. 7:30 pm.

Galleries

Museums

• “Being Singular Plural” at The Guggenheim Museum, Upper East Side. View screening schedule. Closed Thursdays. $18 general/$15 students and seniors/Children free. Free Saturdays 5:45 to 7:45 pm. Ends June 6.
• “Spiels in the House of Art: Photography, Film and Video” at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Closed Mondays. Suggested donation admission. Ends August 26.
• Media Lounge and Contemporary Galleries: 1980-Now at MoMA, Midtown. $20 general/$12 students/$16 seniors. Closed Tuesday. Ongoing.
• Mark Boulos “Projects 97” at MoMA, Midtown. $20 general/$12 students/$16 seniors. Closed Tuesday. Through July  16.
• “9 Scripts from a Nation at War” at MoMA, Midtown. Work by Andrea Geyer, Sharon Hayes, Ashley Hunt, Katya Sander and David Thorne. $20 general/$12 students/$16 seniors. Closed Tuesday. Through August 6.
• “The Shaping of New Visions: Photography, Film, Photobook” at MoMA, Midtown. Work by Andrea Geyer, Sharon Hayes, Ashley Hunt, Katya Sander and David Thorne. $20 general/$12 students/$16 seniors. Closed Tuesday. Through April 29.
• Frances Stark “My Best Thing” at MoMA P.S.1, Queens. $10 general/$5 students/$5 seniors. Closed Tuesday/Wednesday. Through April.
• Rania Stephan at MoMA P.S.1, Queens. $10 general/$5 students/$5 seniors. Closed Tuesday/Wednesday. Through April.
• Chim↑Pom at MoMA P.S.1, Queens. $10 general/$5 students/$5 seniors. Closed Tuesday/Wednesday. Through April 23.
• Clifford Owens “Anthology” at MoMA P.S.1, Queens. $10 general/$5 students/$5 seniors. Closed Tuesday/Wednesday. Through May 7.
• Julika Rudelius “What is on the Outside” at The Museum of Arts and Design, Columbus Circle. $15 general/$12 students and seniors. Open 7 days a week. Through July 5.
• Neil Goldberg “Stories the City Tells Itself” at Museum of the City of New York, Upper West Side. $10 general/$6 students and seniors. Open 7 days a week. Ends May 28.
• View all exhibitions at Museum of the Moving Image, Astoria, Queens. $12 general/$9 students and seniors/$6 ages 3 to 18. Free admission Friday 4-8 pm. Closed Monday.
• Whitney Biennial 2012 at The Whitney Museum. See screening schedule above. Ends May 27.

Below listed North-South

Midtown

• Notations: The Cage Effect Today at Hunter College Times Square Gallery, 450 West 41 Street.  Open Tues-Sat 1:00 pm to 6:00 pm. Ends April 21.

Chelsea

• Nina Yuen “The School” at Lombard-Freid Projects, 518 West 19 Street. Open Tues-Sat 11:00 am to 6:00 pm. Ends May 26.
• Lorraine O’Grady “New Worlds” at Alexander Gray Associates, 508 West 26 Street. Open Tues-Sat 11:00 am to 6:00 pm. Ends May 19.
• Alex Prager “Compulsion” at Yancey Richardson Gallery, 535 West 22 Street, 3rd Floor. Open Tues-Sat 10:00 am to 6:00 pm. Ends May 19.
• Beryl Korot “Selected Video Works: 1977 to Present” at bitforms gallery nyc, 529 West 20 Street. Open Tues-Sat 11:00 am to 6:00 pm. Ends May 5.

Downtown

• “Constructed Site” at .No Gallery, 251 East Houston Street. Closed Mondays. Tue-Fri open Noon to 6:00 pm, Sat-Sun open 1:00 pm. Ends April 29.
• Owen Land at Essex Street, 114 Eldridge Street. Appointments only. Ends May 13.
• Shannon Plumb & Marianna Rothen “Last Seduction” at Hendershot Gallery, 195 Chrystie Street. Open Tues-Sun 11:00 am to 6:00 pm. Ends May 3.
• “Radical Localism: Art, Video and Culture from Pueblo Nuevo’s Mexicali Rose” at Artists Space. Curated by Chris Kraus and Mexicali Rose with Artists Space. Open Wed to Sun Noon to 6:00 pm. Ends May 27.
• Frank Heath “Post Holes” at Simone Subal, 131 Bowery, 2nd Floor. “Graffiti Report Form” begins on the hour. Open Wed to Sun Noon to 6:00 pm. Ends April 26.
• Mary Ellen Carroll “Federal, State, Country and City” at Third Streaming, 10 Greene St. Open Wed-Sat Noon to 6:00 pm. Ends May 19.

Brooklyn

• Charles Atlas “The Illusion of Democracy” at Luhring Augustine, 25 Knickerbocker Avenue, Bushwick. Open Tues-Sat 10:00 am to 6:00 pm. Ends May 20.
• Stephen Dirkes “Obscure Object Films – Photoplays” at Rabbithole, 33 Washington Street, DUMBO. Open Mon-Fri Noon to 5:00 pm. Ends April 30.
• Hollis Frampton, Fiona Banner, Melinda McDaniel and Klub Zwei ”So to Speak” at BRIC Rotunda Gallery, 33 Clinton Street, Brooklyn Heights. Open Tues.-Sat. Noon to 6:00 pm. Ends April 28.